SUZAN FRASER

Sixteen Turkish workers kidnapped from a construction site in Baghdad and held for nearly a month have been released.

Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said through his Twitter account that the workers were handed over to the country’s ambassador in Iraq and that they were all in good health.

Preparations are underway to ensure their return home as soon as possible

Ahmet Davutoglu

In Baghdad, the spokesman for the city’s military command, Brigadier General Saad Maan Ibrahim, confirmed the release and said the Turkish workers were now inside the Turkish Embassy.

The men, employed by ­Turkish construction company Nurol Insaat, were part of a group of 18 Turkish workers snatched in Baghdad’s Shiite-dominated Sadr City on 2 September.

After their abduction, a video from a previously unknown militant group showed the hostages and demanded Turkey halt the flow of militants into Iraq, stop the passage of oil from Iraq’s northern Kurdish region via Turkish territory and lift what they called a “siege” on Syrian cities.

The brazen abduction laid bare serious security gaps in the heavily guarded Baghdad. Two of the kidnapped workers were released later in September in the southern city of Basra, a predominantly Shiite area of Iraq.

Mr Davutoglu thanked “Iraqi friends” who had worked toward the men’s release, without elaborating. “Preparations are underway to ensure their return home as soon as possible,” he said.

Brig Gen Ibrahim said the 16 workers were found in the town of Musayyib, about 40 miles south of Baghdad.

An Iraqi national was kidnapped along with the Turks. Gunmen stormed the site on 2 September as the workers were sleeping in caravans, breaking down doors and disarming the guards before taking the workers away.

Baghdad has been torn by violence for over a decade, with roadside bombs, suicide attacks and assassinations almost daily. While kidnapping for ransom has continued, mass abductions have been almost unheard of in the past few years.